Free Look at me: by Jennifer Egan

he said.
    Across the river, the sun had vanished behind downtown like a coin in a slot. Charlotte wondered how long she’d been standing there. She straddled her bike. “Well. Adios.”
    The man raised a hand to his injured face. An indeterminate gesture, part salute, part wave.
    Charlotte sailed the short distance to the Y, then peeled around it to the expressway. She felt jittery, breathless. In life she was secretive: a hoarder of thoughts and fears and weaknesses—most of all her hopes, lest they be diminished. Yet in the presence of strangers, confidences forced themselves from Charlotte almost indiscriminately, drummed out by some pressure she was not even aware of. Later, she would reassure herself that no one would ever find out—the people didn’t know her name! That was the beauty of it.
    She scampered her bike across the expressway, pavement hot under her tennis shoes, white lights of distant cars pulsing toward her in the dusty sunset. Her own street dead-ended against the expressway’s opposite side; she pedaled up the long driveway and left her bike in the shed. Her mother watched from the kitchen window as Charlotte ran across the lawn. Ellen was dressed for dinner, her hair in a clip.
    “Where have you been?” she cried. “We’re leaving in ten minutes!”
    “Don’t worry.”
    “Go. Go. You’re all sweaty.”
    “I’m going!”
    In her bedroom, Charlotte paused to check on her fish, veiled, mysterious creatures suspended in saltwater. They had an air of great knowing, as if this room, this house, this life of hers could be understood by the fish in silent, watery reverse. Charlotte had worked for nearly a year at Fish World, where she had a discount.
    She showered quickly and returned to the kitchen, where Ricky and her father were beginning a game of chess. Harris had taught him in the hospital; their matches could straddle days.
    “How was your ride?” her father asked.
    “Good. Hot.”
    She stood at the refrigerator pouring a glass of juice, her father’s gaze jabbing her between the shoulder blades. “You thought any more about this school thing?” he said at last, with strained nonchalance.
    She drained the glass. “Nope.” She was thinking of the man by the river, feeling the beat of residual excitement.
    Her mother hurried into the kitchen, high heels clipping the tiles. “Come on, come on,” she said. “We’re late.”
    “Ding-ding, Mom,” Ricky said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
    They took Ellen’s new Lexus, gliding over the expressway in the silky beginnings of dusk, Ricky flopped against Charlotte in the backseat as if she were an element of the upholstery. In the rearview mirror, Harris observed this physical ease between his kids with a kind of wonderment; when he tried to hold Ricky—even touch him, sometimes—his son flinched away like a deer. Ricky’s hair had grown back fine and dark; he was beautiful, this boy of thirteen, beautiful in a way that unnerved people, made them gape at him in the supermarket, the hospital. Harris was embarrassed by this beauty of his son’s, as if it bespoke some indulgence or folly of his own. But it was all Ellen’s: the olive skin, the long black eyes.
    As they crossed the river on the Spring Creek Bridge, Charlotte glanced north and saw the water-skiers still there. It wasn’t Scott Hess, but she sank into the memory nevertheless: a party last fall, the beginning of sophomore year, when she’d smoked pot and gotten stoned, her first time. Skidding, uncontrollable laughter, dipping French fries into mustard, then dabbing them in Equal, which was all the party giver’s diet-conscious mother had around. Everyone swarming into a purple Jeep with Scott Hess: athlete, star, junior, a boy to whom Charlotte never had spoken directly. Squashed against him in front, she’d grown less aware of the wriggling kids around her, less aware of R.E.M. on the stereo, and more aware of the heat issuing from Scott Hess’s upper arm. A